Video game legend, Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda has announced that he is retiring from his position as head of Nintendo's game design department, "to work on smaller, more personal projects," within the company, according to an interview with Wired.

“Inside our office, I’ve been recently declaring, ‘I’m going to retire, I’m going to retire,’” Miyamoto said through his interpreter. “I’m not saying that I’m going to retire from game development altogether. What I mean by retiring is, retiring from my current position.” He went on to say that he's taking a leave from supervising massive games like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword to work on projects that won't take as long to complete.

"What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself,” Miyamoto said. “Probably working on a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself. Something really small.” He hopes that this small project will start in 2012.

The reasoning behind Miyamoto's retirement is entirely selfless. He wants to send a message that he won't always be around for younger developers to rely on. “The reason why I’m stressing that is that unless I say that I’m retiring, I cannot nurture the young developers,” he said. “After all, if I’m there in my position as it is, then there’s always kind of a relationship. And the young guys are always kind of in a situation where they have to listen to my ideas. But I need some people who are growing up much more than today.”

While we wish all the best for Shigeru Miyamoto in the future, we have to wonder if his retirement is coming because Nintendo has lost so much money this year and he wants to move on to bigger and possibly better things. And now that the face of Nintendo is leaving the company, how much water are they going to be in? Hopefully they'll be okay without one of the men that started it all.